A Kingdom Divided
By Samey90

Reviewed by Rinnaul

Trying something a bit new with this. There used to be comments that our reviews were geared heavily towards editing and the authors, with little for a reader to go by. And I sometimes think this may still be the case. So I’m going to begin with a short, spoiler-free, reader-focused review; and then continue with my normal commentary and full review. I’m also dressing up my reviews a whole bunch so they look as pretty as Tidal’s.

And now we begin the interesting challenge of giving a fair and honest review to a story I seriously disliked.

If you want to see ponies dealing with the horrors of war in a painfully unforgiving fashion, this has that. The first chapter has some major pacing issues, and I disagree with its characterization of Luna and Celestia (and even Twilight in the first chapter), but if you can accept it’s premise and the actions taken by the princesses, it’s worth a look. However, if you don’t want to see major characters being killed, you should probably pass it up. With that in mind, give the first chapter a read. You’ll be able to quickly determine whether the premise works for you, while the rapid pace and dialogue-heavy writing style both get dialed back in later chapters.

I’ll be commentating on Chapters 1-3, as I’d have to spoiler-tag so much of a Chapter 4 commentary that it would become unreadable.

The chapter-heading quotes come off as pretentious more often than not, particularly when they come from the Bible.

Economic turmoil is not something I often see MLP fics take on, so that’s interesting. Too bad it’s just a setup to have the war take off. You probably could have explored this further, and it would have helped slow the pacing of this first chapter, and given you time to properly justify Luna’s actions. There are also some lines that feel contradictory - Dash mentions Cloudsdale is among the worst cities for unrest but, then goes on to mention why it should be one of the most stable. I don’t know if “pegasi are short-fused” does enough to explain that.

Here’s one of the major problems I had with the story. The scenario escalates too quickly and with too little explanation in the first chapter. I understand it’s not the point of the story, and going into too much detail could bog down the pacing, but explaining too little makes the plot seem thin and forced, like it’s just an excuse to send the ponies to war.

Twilight immediately assuming that Luna is falling to the Nightmare again also happens too quickly. She’s high-strung, sure, but Twilight is supposed to be the representation of the magic of friendship. Has she not tried sitting down and talking with the other two princesses? Celestia is like a second mother to her, and she seems to count Luna among her friends. I can’t believe she wouldn’t try to find out what’s going on from the horse’s mouth, as it were.

Rarity has a very convenient sudden return to Ponyville - honestly, you could have cut this part and never had her in Canterlot to begin with and it wouldn’t have hurt anything. Her absence and sudden reappearance is so quick and unexplored that for a while I actually thought we’d discover that Rarity had some ulterior motive for her involvement in the war effort, particularly after she stepped up and lied to Luna when they met her.

Luna feels very OOC through much of this chapter. Even beyond taking such a hard stance against Celestia. I don’t expect her to be furious that Twilight thought they would be able to use the Elements on her - after all, if she isn’t Nightmare Moon, what could they possibly do to her? I more expect her to feel hurt and betrayed, taking this to mean that her friends don’t trust her judgement. She’s also very quick to escalate things to lethal force in response to their actions.

We get reference to and argument Dash and AJ are having about whether or not they should turn to violence, but it’s something we really should have seen rather than heard about. I’d also bring up Dash’s poor reasoning regarding the riots in Cloudsdale, but I think I’ll call that foreshadowing of Dash’s conflict later on rather than weak characterization.

I feel like the Mane Six are being shoehorned into this story. They can’t possibly be the best-qualified ponies for these positions. Twilight being put in charge of strategy because she’s read about it a lot? Shouldn’t Celestia just get Shining Armor back as quickly as possible instead? His sister may be well-read, but she has no practical experience whatsoever. The rest are similarly questionable.

I have to question Celestia as well - we expect her to be a paragon of wisdom who holds peace and friendship as the highest virtues. It keeps bothering me that she and Luna have gone so far past discussing their problems without any explanation, particularly considering failing to communicate with Luna is what lead to them being separated for 1,000 years. I also have trouble accepting her so readily asking the Mane Six to participate in open warfare. I would have thought she’d spare them at any cost.

Entering Chapter 2, the pacing slowed down, anyway. And giving Vinyl a complete “Fuck The World” reaction is understandable, though I think it would make sense for her to do it Prince-style (“Cause if I’m gonna die I’m gonna listen to my party tonight!”) instead of the jaded spite thing she seems to have going. Also, the suicide next door was a nice touch of harsh realism, if less than perfectly executed.

Luna’s forces seem to be going full-on police state, which also feels out of place in a MLP fic, and equally so coming from Luna, and the guard’s way of addressing Vinyl was unprofessional to the point of being unbelievable. However, despite all the problems I have with this story, the phrase “unfucked beyond belief” was hilarious.

And I can completely believe that Vinyl would try something as stupid as enlisting to steal an airship just to avoid having to walk all the way home, even though the presentation of the soldiers here makes them all seem trigger-happy, blindly zealous, stupid, and/or crude.

I still can’t shake the thought that war can’t possibly accomplish anything here. The entire situation seems to have escalated beyond any reasonable response. While that may be part of the point of the story, it still makes the plot feel forced whenever I remember it.

And wow, Dash’s tactics. I can’t believe that’s something Dash would even suggest. That sort of thing should be coming out of Dust’s mouth, while Dash is appropriately disgusted and horrified at how bloodthirsty her tactics are.

Although I’ll grant that the story is doing a good job at making me fear for Vinyl’s safety. Few fanfics can make me honestly worry about a character’s fate, because I’m always sure the author won’t actually do it. In your case, I think you would. So, bravo on that.

Okay, Dash explicitly told them not to disable the ships and instead focus on crew casualties. Now every action and order from her is aimed at disabling the ships. Even if those are the better tactics, why the change? Unless, again, this is character development rather than characterization issues.

Dust has a point. Dash, why are you upset about killing the crew when your entire plan was “kill the crew”?

I see that we’re trying to show that Rainbow Dash, despite being so gung-ho about a fight before, is realizing the actual horrors of war and beginning to regret her former enthusiasm. That makes sense. But it’s being done in a haphazard fashion with little development. We need a little more attention given to it, and a more consistent direction.

Nice reference to Luna’s abilities, and honestly, she should be able to demoralize her opponents to the point of crippling them with her dreamwalking powers. This war should be painfully one-sided in Luna’s favor unless Celestia were willing to join the fight on the front lines herself, and then it would be painfully one-sided in her favor.

The point of view is consistent, remaining third-person omniscient and following one or two characters in each chapter - primarily whichever character the chapter is named for. The style was quick and dialogue-heavy (something I’m really in no place to complain about) at first, but the pacing evened out and descriptions became more detailed as the story progressed. Still, things move perhaps a bit too slowly in some action scenes, and a bit too quickly in some emotional ones. However, the only time flow really impacted readability in a negative way was during the first chapter, where everything was just moving far too quickly.

The intent seems to be to show the horror and futility of war. It succeeds at this, but the way it’s set up can be frustrating and work against that purpose.

Score: B

There were few mistakes, and no spelling errors that I noticed, but I did see several grammatical issues, many of which were recurring problems.

- “Exactly. “This is like (extra quotation mark)
- was close to the Luna’s headquarters (extraneous “the”)
- those projects of new uniforms (nothing incorrect, but very awkward phrasing)
- catch some train to Canterlot (“catch a train” would work better)
- gave a soldier (in this context, should probably be “gave the soldier”)
- be a mature one (“be the mature one”)
- a simple logic (extraneous “a”)

Your pacing and escalation are much too fast early on. If you went back and slowed things down, giving us more time in the exposition to establish why war was the only option, it would go a long way towards resolving my major problems with the story. In particular, it would give you more time to justify Luna’s actions. She drives the plot, but I could never accept that she would take such a firm stance against her sister, nor that she’d escalate the matter into full-scale war.

Recommended (But not personally)

I did not enjoy the story myself, but that’s because I found this representation of Luna to be unbelievable, and as she drove the plot through her actions, that made the plot unbelievable. For anyone who can accept the characterization of Celestia and Luna, and that they would allow matters to escalate to this point, it’s worth a look, as its other problems are minor in comparison.

2810939
Thanks for the review

I'm planning to rewrite the first chapter at some point (my writing style changed much since September/October, when I wrote it, and now it looks off even for me). Many things about the causes of the war (i.e. Cloudsdale) will be revealed later via flashbacks.